Anne Emery wins best crime novel award for Though the Heavens Fall
Jane van Koeverden | | Posted: May 24, 2019 2:02 PM | Last Updated: May 24, 2019
The Arthur Ellis Awards annually celebrate the best in Canadian crime writing
Halifax-based mystery writer Anne Emery took home top honours at the Arthur Ellis Awards, which annually celebrate Canadian crime writing.
Emery won the prize for best crime novel for Though the Heavens Fall, the latest instalment in her popular Collins-Burke mystery series. The book takes place in Belfast of 1995, as the Irish Republican Army calls for a ceasefire to the violence that has ripped through the city, which lures Collins and Burke to town.
Linwood Barclay won the best juvenile/young adult crime book category for Escape. The novel is the second in a series about a part-robot dog named Chipper who runs away from a secret institution and forges a friendship with three preteens.
Sarah Weinman's The Real Lolita won best nonfiction crime book. The New York-based journalist investigates how the kidnapping of an 11-year-old girl named Sally Horner influenced Vladimir Nabokov to write the novel Lolita.
A.J. Devlin won the prize for best first crime novel for Cobra Clutch. The B.C. writer's debut kicks off a series about a former pro-wrestler named "Hammerhead" Jed Ounstead who finds himself in the clutches of Vancouver's underworld while looking for his former partner's kidnapped pet snake.
Here are all of the 2019 Arthur Ellis Award winners:
- Best crime novel: Though the Heavens Fall by Anne Emery
- Best first crime novel ($1,000): Cobra Clutch by A.J. Devlin
- Best crime novella ($200): Murder Among the Pines by John Lawrence Reynolds
- Best crime short story ($300): Terminal City by Linda L. Richards
- Best crime book in French: Adolphus — Une enquête de Joseph Laflamme by Hervé Gagnon
- Best juvenile/young adult crime book: Escape by Linwood Barclay
- Best nonfiction crime book: The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman
- Best unpublished manuscript ($500): The Scarlet Cross by Liv McFarlane